


Telenovelas

by MidnightCraze



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 03:39:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidnightCraze/pseuds/MidnightCraze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because it's tennis, and tennis is simple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Telenovelas

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [טלנובלות](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/21714) by Lia T.T (fanfiction.net). 



> English might not be perfect.

The seven year old Echizen Ryoma looks with wonder at the television screen while his mother lets out small sobs, her eyes glazed. He asks his father, Echizen Nanjirou, if the television has done something to her and that's why they aren't watching Wimbledon right now.

 His father rolls his eyes and curses in his heart at Rinko and her stupid telenovelas.

 ---

 The twelve year old Ryoma has long ago learned his father's habit to roll his eyes every time his mother watches her TV shows. He doesn't think he will ever understand why the fake lives of those fake actors have to be so complicated. If the world was based on tennis, he thinks, everything would be simpler; more logical; much more logical.

 When he points that out - apparently the virtue of keeping his thoughts to himself about some matters has not been established in his mind yet, somehow his father had yet to teach him that - his mother sends him to sleep saying he has school in the morning. When Ryoma obeys it doesn't cross his mind that there might be telenovelas out of the TV screen.

 The next day, Ryoma meets Tezuka Kunimitsu.

\---

The sixteen year old Ryoma does not remember his mother's telenovelas - he learned to run away whenever his mother came into the living room with his cousin and a package of tissues, just like he learned that there were things better left unsaid - but he has long ago started to understand, unconsciously, of course, why each character, as fake as it may be, acts the way it does.

\---

Ryoma does not fall in love with the captain of his tennis team, and the captain does not reject him. He doesn't feel any reliance on the one who catches him and brings him back to the ground, slowly, Fuji Syusuke. He doesn't fall in love with Fuji Syusuke either. When he is with Fuji, behind closed doors, he doesn't think of Tezuka.

All this doesn't happen because he doesn't _want_ it to happen. He hopes that if he wants it enough, one day he will wake up and find out all the past is one big match, and it doesn't matter who won the most, because it's tennis and tennis is simple and rational.

\---

Fuji thinks Ryoma is tennis. The essence of Ryoma is tennis, his aspirations, his thinking; all that he is to the last hair.

The first time Fuji kisses Ryoma they are on the court attempting a second time to finish their unfinished match. Ryoma is fourteen years old. It is raining again, and they are forced to stop. Ryoma, from his place next to the net, the place where he fell, his footprint deep in the muddy ground, looks up and Fuji thinks Ryoma is beautiful, tufts of wet hair sticking out of his white cap framing his dominant face, golden eyes focused and half-expecting the match will resume the moment he picks up the ball on the other side of the net. Fuji wonders how Tezuka gave up on all of this, how the captain had enough control to do so. After all, the Tezuka he knew never lost.

"Mada mada dane, Echizen-kun," he says to Ryoma with a smile.

The end of the match they spend next to the net, where Ryoma fell, the rain continuing to pour on them as Ryoma clings to Fuji so that he doesn't fall on him every time he rose on his tiptoes to connect their lips.

\---

Tezuka knows Ryoma is tennis. It is so obvious to him, so clear, that he can't keep seeing his reflection in those golden eyes anymore. Tezuka isn't going to let the Prince of Tennis, as he is called, to break him.

Only Fuji, not even Echizen himself, knows Tezuka is wrong.

\---

On his birthday, Fuji brings Ryoma a bouquet and a can of 'Ponta', along with a food bowl for cats and a tennis ball. They play, starting from where they stopped that match from before. They don't get to finish that match either; before the final set Ryoma sees Tezuka looking at them from the corner of his eye, and the racket jumps out of his hand before he serves. He wonders how long the captain has been standing there.

Fuji knew he was there, of course. He knew what would happen if he pointed it out. He was right about the result.

Ryoma leaves the court in the direction of Tezuka without looking back. Fuji doesn't hear the conversation, and he doesn't need to in order to understand what they are talking about. He does not fail to see the young boy getting close to the captain, mere inches separating between them and Tezuka hands Ryoma something before mumbling something - Fuji would bet all his money that Tezuka said the warning he tended to every free moment, what he said to Echizen when he first rejected him - and leaving.

Ryoma comes back to the court without concentration and Fuji says with his usual smile that it is late and they should be heading back. Ryoma nods as an answer, and Fuji thinks he would have nod like that even if he was asked if he thought Oishi-fukubuchou and Atobe fit with each other.

\---

Ryoma is fifteen when he experiences intercourse for the first time. Or making love, or having sex, he doesn't know how to call it. He doesn't call it at all. It's just something he does, like eating and sleeping and going to his room when his mother comes to watch TV.

He doesn't really know what's happening. Ryoma is used to Fuji's touch, used to arching his back to the fingers that are being wrapped around him. On the other hand, he isn't used to the fingers that penetrate into him followed by Fuji.

Ryoma's legs are spread over the older one's shoulders as Fuji pushes inside him and pulls out, in and out, one hand steady on the bed, the other between their warm bodies, on Echizen.

Fuji hears moans underneath him, so addictive and making him want to stay like that forever, Echizen under him, around him, in the sounds of the air, in the smell, everywhere.

Later, when they lie in the bed, still breathing heavily, Ryoma thinks that he hasn't felt such a high since his last match with Tezuka.

\---

"Ryoma-kun," Fuji's eyes open.

"Fuji-senpai." Ryoma almost _feels_ Fuji's blue and invading and hypnotizing eyes and he know the boy - he wonders for a moment if 'boy' is the right word - who hovers him is serious.

"Ryoma-kun." Ryoma feels the other's hand on his hip again, wandering softly at the same area it was earlier that evening. "What are you thinking about?"

Ryoma looks away. "Nothing."

Fuji smiles while his hand goes up and a weak moan comes out of Echizen. He prefers to think he hasn't lost the battle yet, but he can't completely block the feeling that has already happened long ago.

\---

Ryoma doesn't open Tezuka's gift until the morning after, when he is in his room and out in the corridor he hears his father's regular teasings about his social life.

Unlike all the gifts he had received from his friends, the gift Tezuka had got him isn't related to tennis in any kind of way. The captain got him an alarm clock.

Ryoma smiles a rare smile.

Later, Echizen Nanjirou walks out of his son's room annoyed and asks his wife why the brat is so nervous. Rinko sighs, despaired when she admits herself for the first time their son is growing up.

\---

Nanjirou indeed is a pervert, and an annoying old man, and everything Ryoma thinks of him, but under all these, there is the reason why Echizen Nanjirou is considered to be the best tennis player; he is sharp, more that people think, much more than he shows.

The monk know his son's orientation, even though the brat has never mentioned it - or even bothered to introduce the feminine guy with the brown hair that went into his room every once in a while - and he knows who his son is looking at yearning, and who his son's thoughts and aspirations not to disappoint are given to.

He hopes the boy-captain knows that.

\---

Tezuka knows, of course.

The first time Ryoma approaches him for something unrelated to tennis, Tezuka tells him not to be careless. He continues with that attitude and sees how Ryoma slowly breaks down and he wants to stop that, and he knows he can't. When Tezuka sees Fuji collecting the shards that build Echizen, he doesn't do anything, but between being worried about the young boy and wanting to always satisfy him, he can't block the feeling of a loss when Fuji's hand musses Echizen's hair with affection, and Tezuka knows he can't stop that either.

\---

The last time Echizen and Fuji play each other, Tezuka watches them. The entire team watches them, actually. No one needs to say to anyone from the junior high team - everyone is there but Kawamura who quit tennis in order to help his father with the restaurant - what is the score they start with, why or what will happen after.

Although they play a single game, in the end they are both exhausted. Fuji - sweating and slightly swaying, his hand shaking, barely holding the racket - looks at Echizen. Echizen is on his knees next to the net, his racket in front of him, his cap long ago disappeared on the court. Echizen looks at Tezuka, who looks back at him.

It isn't the first time Fuji has lost in the 18 years he has been living, but he had never felt the loss like now. The feeling isn't completely related to tennis.

\---

The end of the day Ryoma spends with Tezuka. Not a word is said about it, but Echizen's tensed glances, the way he had told him he would leave without him, these things reveals to Fuji Echizen's actions like a map.

When he goes back to his home with Eiji, only half listening to the flow that comes out of the redhead acrobat, it crosses his mind that Echizen is the only person he is able to read like that and still be interested in him with such… lust - one might call it obsession - and Fuji wonders what makes Tezuka so special. Fuji knows it doesn't matter how many times he would beat Tezuka, Echizen will never take his admiring and surprised eyes off the captain. Oh, well, Fuji thinks with a smile, this is Tezuka, after all. Tezuka always wins, even when he loses.

\---

Ryoma, soon to be 16, snuggles up against Tezuka's muscular chest as if trying to draw the other's body heat. He has no feelings of regret, and it would not be a surprise neither to Tezuka nor to Fuji.

Tezuka runs long fingers through the other's dark hair and think to himself that the hair is longer and much softer than he had ever imagined.

Only in the depths of his mind, in the place where he knows why he had stopped rejecting Ryoma, he knows Echizen had actually grown up.

Tezuka hopes he is right with his decision.

\---

Ryoma wonders where he went wrong.

When Momo-senpai tries to explain to him, the young boy's mind turns to an automatic-listener while his brain wanders to very different areas.

Before he understand what happens, the three cheerleaders of Seigaku High - he remembers them according to the names "mushroom head", "egg head" and "the loud one" (he actually remembers their names and even though he would never admit it, he sees them as friends in some kind of twisted way) - are joining the table. Ryoma still isn't listening.

"Oi, Echizen!" the loud one calls, annoyed. It is only then that he notices Momo-senpai, Katsuo and Kachirou are also staring at him.

"Hm?" he responds nonchalantly.

Horio frowns and the only thing Ryoma can do in response is rolling his eyes intensively.

"That guy," Momo calls with his usual enthusiasm, "he always thinks about tennis!"

Ryoma doesn't bother to correct his senpai.

"Ryoma-kun…" the two quieter boys mumble in his direction.

"You know, Echizen," it is easy to recognize the narcissism tone in Horio's voice. "Not everything is about tennis. In the end it will end too!"

Ryoma opens his eyes wide open - not entirely because of the rare fact that Horio was right for once - and in his mind, as if the black fog that was present there all day had faded, floated one clear question; what will happen after?

\---

That morning when his mother comes down to the living room and turns on the TV, shooting at Ryoma a look that says without questioning he should clear her space to sit on the couch, the mother is surprised to find out Ryoma doesn't leave the room like any other day, but stays to watch with her.

\---

There aren't many things that can surprise Echizen Nanjirou. When he leaves his bedroom to find his wife telling his son the summary of a soap opera that is scattered over thousands episodes and the brat is actually _listening_ , it definitely goes into the category of unexpected-things-the-brat-does, along with the first point Ryoma gained against him on court.

Again, Nanjirou is sorry for not objecting his wife when she forbid him showing the six year old Ryoma some of his more "interesting" magazines.

\---

Ryoma doesn't like thinking about things that aren't simple. He hates searching for answers for questions that come after the blur in his mind takes over, and not a single yellow ball can get in and clear it.

Of course, after he answered his question what would happen after tennis - or rather say he chose - it came to his mind that he didn't know what he wanted, or _who_.

He answered that quickly too; he wants them both.

The question is _how_.

\---

They say it is impossible to surprise Fuji Syusuke, a reputation the Tensai cherished almost as his cacti collection.

He who started the rumor didn't know Echizen Ryoma, apparently, and even if he did it wouldn't be relevant.

Same thing went for Tezuka Kunimitsu.

\---

Ryoma has no tact. Not the he cares, really.

The day he calls his two lovers to the same place, it seems like the tension in the air is as solid as wood while Ryoma isn't affected, as if the thing is totally natural.

It isn't shown on the other two's faces either. Fuji is smiling. Tezuka frowns a little, like he always does.

Everything changes when Ryoma simply tells them he wants to live with them. With both of them.

It doesn't help when he mentions the sex part.

Tezuka doesn't know _exactly_ where he had slipped. He suspects it's somewhere between his choice to go to Seigaku High instead of other places - Echizen-Ryoma-less - to the implementation of his will to play with said boy.

When he rejected Echizen for the first time, the second, the third, and all the times after - he had to admit that Echizen was indeed stubborn - and in the end when he agreed to accept him, after all the times he had stopped himself from doing the first move; all these were compromises.

Tezuka, the captain of Seigaku, lives on compromises just like Ryoma lives on tennis. He knows relinquishing means being careful and Tezuka doesn't want to find himself resisting what he has always been trying to teach.

When Echizen tells him he wants to live with him _and_ with Fuji, he wonders what would be counted as being careless this time.

In the end, Tezuka decides to compromise.

Fuji _doesn't_ stumble. It's his most important virtue in his eyes. He had never meant to let others see him failing, never, to anyone, a thing that worked out for him so far, he thinks. The only exception is Echizen Ryoma.

Fuji cares, no matter why and for whom. He watches out, he knows if he doesn't pay attention things might change, a risk he isn't to take.

He watches everyone, from his brother to Taka-san. Fuji likes to know what is going on, as he says to himself.

When Ryoma offers him to live with his good friend and his strongest and oldest rival, Fuji smiles.

He isn't going to trip, not this time.

The seventeen year old Ryoma looks out the window with his golden eyes, watching Saint Rudolph students leaving school after their school day. Not that he had many choices, a thing Fuji took care of when he chose an apartment that fit his personal spying needs.

On his one side lies Tezuka Kunimitsu, the captain of the Seigaku team, on the other side Fuji Syusuke, one of the best tennis players in high school level.

When he opens his eyes he stretches his body lazily and exploits the two heat sources that weren't, rarely, belong to his loyal cat.

They just lay there, without saying a word. In Tezuka and Fuji's heads crosses the thought that there is no _need_ in words anymore, before it turns to a new source of noise coming from the TV. They turn their heads to find a soap opera on a random channel.

When in the end Tezuka mutters something about changing the channel, Ryoma suddenly loses the remote and refuses to get up and search for it.

Ryoma has no doubt Fuji sees - or at least knows - the remote under the pillow, covered with their weight. They leave the channel on while Fuji tells - to Tezuka, mostly - the summary of the long plot, as his sister told him before.

Ryoma lets out a satisfied moan, too silent to be heard by the two next to him, and sits comfortably between them. He thinks maybe those telenovelas, as his mother says, aren't that bad.

 

**THE END**


End file.
